


Father's Day

by Nicole Premier (MistressArachnia)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types, Togainu no Chi
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Family Drama, Fanart, Illustrated, M/M, Medical Torture, Murder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 01:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16316150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressArachnia/pseuds/Nicole%20Premier
Summary: No amount of forgiveness will ever make father’s day any easier for Motomi… or for Nano. Under the circumstances, this was the best Nano could do.





	Father's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coarsesalt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coarsesalt/gifts).



> This story follows Tourniquet. It was written for a friend who roleplays Motomi as a gift for Father's Day and is based on our ongoing roleplay verse. It takes place after Keisuke's ending in Togainu no Chi after Motomi confronted Nano alone and injured in the church. Alas, after seeing his intended victim up close, Motomi couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Nor could he let him go. Thus began an unusual, but oddly symbiotic relationship.

This was one of the few days each year where Nano knew Motomi would barely speak to him. Nano couldn’t comprehend why at first, even after he followed his lover silently through the city and took note of the colorful advertisements posted on shop windows. Families smiling. So much happiness. It wasn’t until Motomi lead him to the graveyard that he finally understood.

Today was Father’s Day, and Motomi’s son was dead.

That brutal realization curled around Nano’s limbs, weighing him down like shackles and anchoring him to the ground where he stood. His pale lips parted to speak, but without breath, no words would come. And so he remained in the shadows.

There was nothing Nano could say or do to comfort Motomi… Because he was the one who had killed his child.

It was ironic. Nano had taken _everything_ from Motomi… yet that very same man had lifted him from the grave and for the first time in his life, given him reason to live. Never was anyone less deserving.

That was Nano’s penance - to live with the crippling weight of his sins forever on his shoulders. With his emotions awakening and love blossoming in his heart, that weight grew heavier every day. Never did a day go by where Nano wasn’t haunted by the ghosts of his past, watching images play out over and over as countless lives flickered and faded in his grasp.

Motomi kept photographs in the small apartment they shared, and Nano found himself transfixed by the smiling faces he saw reflected in the images. Sometimes, when he was alone, Nano would pick them up and study them. He had never had a family, at least not that he could remember, but when he looked at these pictures, he thought he could imagine what it might have been like. Nano’s emotions might have been torn from him, but when he saw the happiness and sadness reflected in Motomi’s eyes when he talked about his loved ones, Nano’s mind and body responded as though he were experiencing it all himself.

That day, like a summoned spirit, Nano stood paralyzed in place beneath the shade of an old plum tree, watching the tears trickle down Motomi’s face onto the small grey stone pillar. There were hundreds of these stones crowded in here, each one nearly identical to the next.

How many were there because of him?

In Motomi’s stories, his boy was mischievous, smiling, joking, playing, laughing. Happy. He loved baseball and airplanes and lizards. He used to build forts in the living room out of cushions. He loved to read stories of far-off countries, so he wanted to travel around the world when he grew up, maybe be a pilot. He always wanted a dog, but his father worked too much and his mother had never had a pet before, so he played with the neighbors’ dog instead. They were best friends. Motomi had promised him that as soon as the war ended, they could get a puppy. When he told him, his eyes lit up and he threw his arms around his father’s neck.

But… when Nano closed his eyes, Motomi’s son didn’t look anything like that on the backs of his eyelids. From the moment his lover showed him those pictures, he remembered everything all too clearly, as though it had happened only yesterday. Even in his dreams he could see it. Sweet brown eyes that looked so very like his father’s. How he loved those eyes.

…Eyes swamped with terror and pain as he gasped for air, choking to death on his own blood with Nano’s hand impaled through his chest.

And as the boy died in his arms Nano felt… nothing at all. Back then, he hadn’t hesitated for an instant. He never did. The child had tried to run, screaming for help, but Nano was faster, and in the end it made no difference. It never did. What good were any of those frail human lives against a living superweapon? In his memories, the boy collapsed in front of the door in a pool of deep red that spread out from his body, limbs still shaking, and Nano’s only thought at the time had been that he needed to escape from that place and this child was in his way. He never even considered what he was doing, never stopped to justify it. Death was simply their fate.

Not even a lifetime of agony could begin to atone for such an act.

And perhaps the worst of it was… if it weren’t for Motomi, Nano probably never would have felt _anything_  for that boy or his cruel fate. Now, everywhere Nano looked the faces of the dead stared back. For each one who he murdered… how many others had perished in grief over their loss? Hundreds, thousands… and all for what?

Nano closed his eyes, but he couldn’t block out the images that came. Motomi was talking now, tears streaming down his face, unaware that Nano was still listening like a ghost in the shadows haunting the graveyard of his victims. How would Motomi explain to his dead son, Nano wondered, that he now lived happily with his murderer?

At least… sometimes Motomi seemed happy. Certainly not now.

Never had Nano wished so badly that he could exchange places with the deceased. If only it were his ashes lying beneath that stone instead, then perhaps Motomi would smile again, and there would be another soul in this world with the same kind brown eyes that he had grown to love.

But that wasn’t possible.

There was nothing anyone could do to change the past, nothing anyone could do that would make it right.

And so Nano simply cupped his hand over his mouth, muffling the strange choked sobs that he could hardly believe were coming from his own throat as he watched.

He never mentioned it to Motomi, and when the same thing happened the following year, he knew better than to follow. Motomi’s grief was his alone to bear, the only thing he had left of his child, and Nano of all people knew better than to try and take that from him.

That was three years ago.

 

* * *

The boy’s breath quickened in terror when he saw Nano standing like a wraith in the doorway, hands dripping with fresh blood. But the child was too weak to run. IV lines crisscrossed his small body, pumping toxic chemicals through his system that numbed him to the pain when they cut into him, subjecting him to experiment after experiment without ever letting him fully recover. That child had no choice but to submit to it all, just as he had no choice but to submit to the monster who now loomed above him.

Such was his destiny.

The child had never known a life outside of this laboratory. He had never felt the sun on his shoulders. Where he came from, it was always night.

Now, the boy squinted in the bright sunlight, trembling and hiding his face behind Nano’s leg. He blinked, eyes dark as midnight gazing up with a mixture of fear and relief. There was something strange about the way the light played about the child’s eyes, the way the colors seemed to shift in the morning sun. For a moment Nano thought he might be seeing things. The boy seemed to speak without speaking, and a soft voice echoed in his mind:

_I always knew you would come for me._

Motomi’s eyes were wide, staring at the two of them before him in silent wonder. Undoubtedly the two ghostly figures made for a very strange sight. Nano had barely taken the time to wash the blood from either of their bodies, and the child was still dressed in nothing more than the hospital gown he was wearing when Nano found him in the surgical suite. A teddy bear peaked out from his arms; he had cried that didn’t want to leave it behind, and Nano didn’t have the heart to refuse him. The boy’s skin was so pale it nearly glowed, crossed with fine blue veins, and he seemed reluctant to leave the other’s shadow.

“Nano, what on earth have you done…?”

The boy clutched tighter onto Nano’s pant legs as Motomi knelt down beside him, but didn’t draw away. Motomi grinned pleasantly.

“Hey there - I see you brought a friend!”

Motomi tapped the teddy bear on the head, and the child smiled back in response. The older man reached out to examine the cuts and bruises on his thin skin, but he didn’t shy away, seeming to know instinctively that the former researcher wouldn’t hurt him.

Finally Nano spoke.

“…I cannot undo the sins of my past. Every action has a consequence. And so I thought… if I could save just one child… how many more lives might be spared the same pain I caused you?”

Motomi’s lips parted, but he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the little boy clinging to Nano’s clothes, nor from the surprisingly tender and natural way the former superweapon caressed the boy’s tiny hand, as though trying to assure him that everything would be alright. The child’s eyes were wet, and his slender limbs trembled with every breath. He looked fragile, ephemeral… a ghost of a child who was only just now seeing the world through his own two eyes.

Eyes that seemed to see straight into his soul, briefly flickering purple when they hit the light just so. Motomi nearly choked on his cigarette.

“Oh God, Nano… You went into the research facility alone, didn’t you?! I told you not to go. If anything would’ve happened to you in there… if they would have taken you, too…”

Nano lowered his head like a scolded puppy.

“I’m sorry… There was nothing more I could do for you… Or for him.”  
  
Before he could blink, Nano found himself swept up in an embrace so tight that it took his breath away.

“No, no… I think you just changed the course of history. Thank goodness you two both got out alright… We’ve got to get him home. It’s okay, kid, you’re safe now. We’re going to take good care of you.”

The soft, sweet voice that spilled from the boy’s lips took them both by surprise.

“…I know.”

Although the child’s voice was weak, there was no fear or hesitation in it as he finally let go of Nano’s pant leg and stepped out into the light. His words were accompanied by a faint smile as he looked up and took hold of Motomi’s hand.

“You do, huh? Well, you’re pretty smart then. What’s your name, kid?”

Before he could reply, Motomi carefully scooped the child up in his arms, mindful to avoid his sutures. In spite of his pain, the little boy giggled happily, leaning his head against Motomi’s chest.

“My name is Sei.”

“Well Sei,” Motomi smiled cheerfully, “You get to celebrate twice today, because you have two dads now.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...And just like that, Nano prevented the entire storyline from DRAMAtical Murder from ever happening. I have a whole plotline going regarding how and why Motomi and Nano are investigating Toue Inc in the first place, but that's another story for another time.
> 
> But hey, now that he's no longer captive, Sei is going to be such a spoiled little princess. (And poor Motomi has two confused test subjects on his hands. He's in for some fun times. LOL)


End file.
